


Sixteen Candles and a Pipe Bomb

by gamerfic



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Action, Birthday Party, Blood of Eden - Freeform, Canon-Typical Violence, Experimental Style, Gen, Mild Gore, Misses Clause Challenge, POV First Person, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28060758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamerfic/pseuds/gamerfic
Summary: A birthday party at the Third House is an occasion not to be missed.
Relationships: Coronabeth Tridentarius & Ianthe Tridentarius
Comments: 12
Kudos: 18
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Sixteen Candles and a Pipe Bomb

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mainland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mainland/gifts).



The cake is all wrong. It should be a masterpiece in purple and gold, coated in flawlessly polished mirror glaze and adorned with sugar jewels. Instead, the decorative flowers and filigrees are all the same sickly mustard hue, while the dull, uneven layer of frosting shows fingerprints all over. The left set of cake tiers leans precipitously toward its twin. Naberius eyes the mess with studious disgust. "I suppose we know which caterer never to hire again," he says, more loudly than he needs to. 

"Oh, Babs, at least give them a chance to make it right," we tell him. We gesture to the grim-faced cake decorator, who is laying out piping bags like a surgeon preparing for a delicate operation. "Besides, it's too late to change course now. The guests have already arrived." 

The three of us turn as one toward the railing of the balcony on which we stand and gaze down into the ballroom below. Chandeliers cast golden light down onto the soaring columns and the gleaming marble floor choked with hundreds of guests. Alone and in pairs and in small clumps, representatives of all the great houses of the Nine Planets System are arriving - or at least, all the ones who find value in seeing and being seen. Moving in unison toward the grand staircase, we share a secret smile. No matter how storied the grudge, no matter how ancient the feud, the others all come when we call them. Necromancers and cavaliers never can resist a gala event. 

Our descent turns heads, as well it should. Everything we do is calculated to draw their attention: the drape of our ball gowns and the richness of their fabric, the cut of Naberius's suit and the gleam of his rapier, the way we move from one step to the next in slow careful unison with perfect poise and posture. The orchestra strikes up a traditional Third House fanfare as we slowly make our way to the center of the mingling guests. We pause to greet those whose favor we most wish to curry, and shoot meaningful glances toward those we want to keep wondering. Our party _is_ a party, to be sure, but like everything else the Third House does it's also a means of making sure we all know where we stand with each other. 

Of course, there are always some who assert their own place in the hierarchy, heedless of how the Third House regards them. Judith Deuteros cuts a path through the crowd, her head held high, her Cohort dress whites as impeccable as ever. She favors us with a nod as crisp as the creases in her trousers. "Happy sixteenth birthday, Your Royal Highnesses." 

"It's always a pleasure, Judith," we tell her as we curtsy shallowly. "Your own big day was last month, wasn't it? I'm afraid we never received an invitation." 

"There was no party," she says, a bit too sharply. "The House of the Second has more pressing concerns." Her mouth twitches in distaste as her eyes flicker around the ballroom, taking in the waiters bearing canapes and champagne flutes on silver trays, the cut flower arrangements on each table, the two-dozen-player orchestra tuning up. "It doesn't matter. I still received an excellent gift. Did you know, Lieutenant Dyas has been promoted to cavalier primary?" 

Now we notice Marta there with us, an eternal shadow at her necromancer's side in her matching red-and-white uniform. "Congratulations," we say, more or less sincerely. It's always been a toss-up as to whether Judith or Marta finds Marta's skills more impressive, so if nothing else they deserve each other. 

Naberius is practically salivating at the news. "Cavalier primary, Marta? Impressive. I'd love to see the new tricks that got you promoted." 

Marta's hand moves unconsciously to the hilt of her rapier, and her gaze wanders toward the dueling ring set up in one of the alcoves. (No self-respecting party on Ida can be expected to conclude without a sword fight or two, be it a friendly bout of sparring or a true demand for satisfaction.) "Is that a challenge, Third?" 

"Would you like it to be?" 

A wordless request for permission passes between necromancer and cavalier, and Marta says, "Indeed." Without hesitation, she and Naberius head for the gathered duelists without another word, each equally eager to prove their martial superiority over the other. 

"You don't mind if he spends the whole night sparring?" asks Judith. 

"Oh, we don't feel like we have to tell him what to do," we say with a dismissive wave of the hand. "He knows to come back if we need him. Why do you ask? Is there some reason we might need him to be on guard?" 

"No! Absolutely not. If I thought so, I wouldn't have sent Lieutenant Dyas away with him. But the Master Warden of the Sixth seems to believe otherwise." Judith rolls her eyes. "Who knows how he earned that title. I guess they give them out to anyone nowadays." 

"Who?" 

"He hasn't managed to introduce himself yet, I take it. Poor boy's been trying to get your attention all evening. Look, there he is now." 

Judith gestures toward a spindly young man in grey robes peering around a carved pillar. His wide eyes blink in alarm behind round spectacles. He's acting more like a beggar longing for the delicacies kept behind a shop window than a guest at a formal Third House occasion. "Are you sure that's the Master Warden?" 

"So he claims." 

"Well, we _did_ invite the Sixth. It would be bad form not to. And the doormen wouldn't have let him in if he weren't on the list." The Third House typically assumes that the Sixth House, like the Eighth and Ninth, will neither attend its events nor RSVP. The Sixth hasn't darkened the Third's door in decades, and our intelligence on them is spotty at best. The espionage corps would never forgive us if we didn't at least try to speak to the Sixth House heir. "Excuse us, please." 

Judith turns briskly on her heel and marches off toward the dueling ring as we approach the so-called Master Warden. At first he appears startled to have been noticed at all, and tries to slip back behind the column before he remembers himself. He steps out into the open, fidgeting nervously with the cuffs of his sleeves as he comes to some semblance of parade rest. "Master Warden?" we ask him softly. We don't want to scare him away, or to draw too much attention from the ubiquitous eavesdroppers at every ball. 

"They mean to kill us all," he blurts out. 

"Beg pardon?" 

He makes several failed attempts to begin again. Finally he manages, "Princesses...Your Royal Highnesses...something's gone very wrong and you're both in terrible danger." 

"Please, keep your voice down." We have no way to tell whether his warning is genuine of some sort of gambit, but either way we don't want him to cause a panic. "And start at the beginning. Who are you and what do you know?" 

"Palamedes Sextus, Master Warden of the Library. I realize our houses haven't always been the closest of allies, but when the Sixth acquired this intelligence we couldn't in good conscience keep from sharing it." As if on cue, the orchestra launches into its first number of the night, all but drowning out his intense whisper. "Can we take this somewhere else?" 

"Not without our cavalier." It never pays to let your guard down. 

"Certainly. Lead the way." 

In the ring, Naberius is proposing that he and Marta go for the best out of five when we take him by the elbow and lead him away. "I almost had her," he protests. 

"Sure you did. Come on, Babs. There's news you should hear. Maybe." 

Small and cozy parlors abound in the alcoves surrounding the ballroom, offering a quiet and secluded place for conversation and relaxation, scheming and trysting. No one thinks of them as private. Only a fool gives away their secrets in the heart of the Third House. If Palamedes knows this, he doesn't let it stop him. He starts talking again the instant we pull the black velvet curtain shut around the sitting room we've chosen. "Undoubtedly the enemy has already begun to execute their plan. You'll want to keep everyone on the lookout for intruders. Who is in charge of your security here?" 

As if we would tell him! "You need to slow down. What are you talking about?" 

"Yes. Right." Palamedes swallows hard and takes a deep breath. "In the course of the Sixth House's normal activities, we intercepted a suspicious individual attempting to breach the security of the Library. Eventually, we convinced them to talk." He's being evasive about what he knows and how he knows it, but there's no point in calling attention to it or trying to get him to reveal more. It seems he _does_ know better than to give too much away to the Third. "They admitted to being a member of Blood of Eden. And when we applied the appropriate pressure, they confessed there was a bombing planned to happen here tonight." 

"Why would BoE target a birthday party?" asks Naberius. 

"Don't you understand? It all makes perfect sense." Palamedes's eyes shine with feverish brightness behind his glasses. "Tonight is quite the occasion. No one on the Nine Planets who's anyone would imagine missing it. I've barely been here an hour and I've already seen the heads of half the houses, plus their heirs and cavaliers. To say nothing of all the other necromancers, or the Cohort officers...A successful strike would do untold damage to the Nine Houses. It could give BoE the opening it needs to destroy us. So you see why I had to share this with you, no matter our past rivalries. Please, Your Highnesses, do something. Before it's too late." 

"Then why are we hearing this from you," we ask him, "instead of from your father?" 

Palamedes grimaces. "Let's just say...not everyone on the Sixth agrees with me about the necessary response. You'll notice that no one else from my house is present tonight." 

So the Sixth House doesn't believe the potential extinction of most of the other houses at the hands of Blood of Eden to be a threat to itself - or at least, not one worth going out of the way to prevent. And its heir may feel differently. Interesting. We file that away for future reference alongside all the other secrets, just the way we've been taught. "And your cavalier..." 

"She's nearby. She'll intervene if she must. I hope it won't come to that." 

"Babs, could you get us some privacy, please?" Nodding, Naberius rises to escort Palamedes past the curtain. 

("This sounds serious," I say. 

"Or like a trap," says Coronabeth. 

"From the Sixth?" says Naberius with a skeptical frown. "They don't usually go in for cloak and dagger shit." 

"Fair," concedes Corona. 

"We should probably tell the security team," I say. 

"Ianthe," says Coronabeth with exaggerated patience, "we don't even know what's going on. Palamedes could be lying. Or confused. The only thing we know for certain is that if we get the captain of the guard involved, no matter what happens, it _will_ ruin our birthday." Already I have a good suspicion of what she's going to suggest. Her mind is undoubtedly made up about doing it, and I can try to talk her out of it but it won't make any difference if I do. "I think we can handle whatever this is on our own. Don't you?") 

So Naberius parts the curtains with a dramatic flourish and announces, "Their Royal Highnesses and I will handle this. Tell us what you learned from the terrorist." 

Palamedes sputters. "Are you sure that's prudent?" 

"Are you sure _what's_ prudent?" asks Judith. 

We turn to see the Second House approaching from the direction of the dueling ring and say, "What do _you_ want?" 

"You didn't come back for our bout, Third," says Marta. "We're forced to assume you found something more interesting to do. And we wouldn't want to miss out." 

"Oh, thank God," says Palamedes. "Lieutenant Deuteros, Lieutenant Dyas, we have reason to believe Blood of Eden plans to attack here tonight." 

Well. So much for handling things quietly. 

We drag Palamedes back into the alcove and get him to tell us everything he knows - which, as it turns out, isn't much more than what he's already told us. The terrorist the Sixth interrogated knew of the scheme in the broadest possible terms, but not any details of who would carry it out or how. Once again, Blood of Eden's cells have held firm in their secrecy. 

To no one's surprise, Judith wants to escalate the entire thing to her superiors in the Cohort. "If BoE is actually present here tonight - which is by no means assured," she says, "it's way above our pay grade. We should inform the proper authorities and enjoy the party." 

It falls to us to convince her otherwise. "Come now, BoE hasn't been relevant in a millennium. Even if they have real firepower, now that we know they're here, it's not like they'll be hard to find. Do you really want to be the one who drags your boss away from the fun over something you could have handled on your own? Or would you rather have them think of you as someone who solves her own problems when it's time for your next promotion?" 

We know we've won by the way Judith's jaw clenches when she says, "Very well. Where shall we begin?" 

"According to our files, long-term undercover work isn't BoE's forte," says Palamedes. "The terrorists are most likely people you wouldn't recognize." 

"Have you seen the length of the guest list?" says Naberius. "That hardly narrows it down." 

"Third House security patted us down when we came in," says Marta. "Walked us through a metal detector, too. There's no way anyone got past their screening with anything more dangerous than a cavalier's weapons." 

"That leaves the people behind the scenes," says Palamedes. "Which makes sense - they'd have more opportunities to get things past security, and to set them up to cause the most damage. Who around here are temporary hires?" 

"The caterers," we say. "The musicians. The people who did the decorating, probably. We can't be sure. It's tacky to plan your own birthday." 

"Then we should split up," says Judith. "Cover as much ground as possible. Alert the others if you see anything suspicious." 

"And hurry," adds Palamedes. "We probably don't have much time." 

The assembled necromancers and cavaliers scatter. The Second fan out across the dance floor, sizing up each waiter and busboy in turn. Palamedes approaches the stage to study the members of the orchestra. So it's our job to go where only we would be welcome. It's a bit unusual for us, as guests of honor, to go wandering through the kitchens in the middle of the party, especially with the climactic cake-cutting so near at hand. But it's not as if temporary staff members are going to question the scions of the Third House, either. 

("What should I be looking for?" Naberius asks under his breath as we walk down the long white-tiled tunnel connecting the ballroom to the catering kitchens. 

"Anything suspicious," I remind him in a low voice. 

"Yes, I know, but what constitutes 'suspicious' to you?" 

" _You're_ the cav. You figure it out." 

"Babs has a point," Coronabeth whispers in my ear. "You haven't given him much to go on." 

"Neither have you." 

Corona rolls her eyes and leans away from me, toward Naberius. "Just watch out for anyone who doesn't belong." 

"Isn't BOE supposed to be in with the temps, none of whom belong?" 

Coronabeth huffs. "It's not my fault the stupid Sixth House couldn't torture their stupid spy into giving up more details. I'm doing the best I can. I'm not the chief of security." 

"And _I_ wanted to take this to the chief of security, but _you_ said we could handle this on our own. So, can we, or can't we?") 

Naberius is likely preparing his own snarky reply, but before he can get it out the swinging double doors at the end of the hall burst open and disgorge a cluster of black-clad waiters pushing a metal cart laden with covered dishes. They must be getting ready to cut and distribute the cake. We flatten ourselves against the walls to let them pass. One of them looks at us oddly as they go by, and we smile pleasantly in return. It wouldn't do to act suspicious. 

The cavernous kitchen is humid and bustling. Chefs in white coats and tall hats shout instructions to each other over the clatter of pots and pans and the sizzle of a grill. The smell of spices and roasting meat wafts toward us on billowing clouds of steam. Everyone around us appears completely engrossed in their tasks, as if asking them to take a break and arm a bomb would be an annoying imposition. "Maybe Palamedes was wrong," we say to no one in particular. 

We continue our sweep of the area, just to be sure. At some point the cake was relocated from the balcony and delivered to a disused corner of the kitchen. The cake decorator and her assistants are still working on it, attacking the edges with piping bags and smoothing the surfaces with little trowels. Their intense focus isn't making much difference. If anything, the cake is even more crooked and smashed now than it was before. We glance at the clock on the wall. It's getting awfully close to cake-cutting time for the decorator to be mucking around down here if she means to get the cake back upstairs in time. 

But does she? 

Now we get it. It should have been obvious all along. The new and untested contractor. The shoddy work. The last-minute modifications requiring the cake to be brought back downstairs, closer to the action, at a time when all the guests are converging on one central location. "The cake is a lie," we say, and then everything goes mad at once. 

Naberius is already moving toward the decorator with his hand on the hilt of his rapier. "Hey you," he begins, but he doesn't get any farther before he's drowned out by screaming. One of the decorator's assistants is yelling incoherently as he yanks a cleaver out of a nearby butcher block and charges at us. He's clumsy and erratic, banking on the element of surprise rather than his own skill, and Naberius is ready for him. With a flick of silvery motion almost too fast for the eye to follow, the tip of Babs's rapier scores the assistant's hand. He falters, wincing in pain, and Naberius's foot lashes out to trip him. The assistant goes down and stays there as Naberius holds the rapier's point to his throat. 

The assistant only distracts us for a second or two, but it's long enough. Another assistant plunges their arm into the cake, up to the shoulder. "No, no, not now!" shouts the decorator, but it's too late. From somewhere deep within the tiers of pastry we hear a loud click and smell the acrid spark of electricity. Ida's thanergenic current courses through us as, almost by instinct, we raise a shield of skin and muscle and fat around us. Naberius forgets all about the BoE member he's guarding and pulls us both down to the tile floor, covering our heads with his perfectly sculpted arms. The last thing we see as the bubble of flesh magic seals itself shut is the decorator diving for cover inside the walk-in cooler. 

Our shield protects us from the force of the explosion but does nothing to hold back its deafening roar. Skin ripples and bows as the shockwave passes over us, but the barrier holds. We lift our heads to discover we're unhurt. The assistant with the cleaver lies unconscious beside us, breathing slowly and shallowly after having inadvertently lent a sizable portion of his thalergy to the shield's creation. Oops. 

The noise of the kitchen has been replaced with an entirely different cacophony: fire alarms, the heavy patter of water falling from the sprinklers, low rumbles, distant screaming. "What happened?" we ask shakily, our own voice barely audible to us over the ringing in our ears. 

Naberius pokes at the barrier with his rapier. We withdraw our focus from the spell and let our shield collapse around us in a wet slump of meat. Now we stand in the only remotely clean spot amidst a blasted ring of yellow cake, twisted metal, rubble, and viscera. Most of the kitchen staff couldn't take cover from the bomb in time - and by the looks of it, neither did most of BoE. The air is too thick with smoke and plaster dust to see much else. 

The emergency lights cast strange red shadows on Naberius's face. "There's fighting in the ballroom," he says. He must be recovering his hearing already. 

"Should we help?" 

"It's your party." 

We begin to pick our way through the ruined kitchen, squinting against the haze in the air. Stone and softer things shift beneath our feet. We don't get far before the loud scrape of metal against rock stops us in our tracks. Turning toward the noise, we see the decorator emerging from the mangled door of the cooler, entirely unhurt and absolutely furious. 

The decorator pulls something out of the pocket of her white chef's coat, fiddles with the top of it, and lobs it in our direction. "Grenade!" shouts Naberius, and knocks us back to the floor. We can't get the shield back up in time. There's another explosion, smaller but much nearer. If we scream, we can't hear it over the roar. Masonry and metal rain down on us, weighing us down, pinning us to the ground. Is one of the rafter beams resting on our legs? Everything from our waist down is an immobile, overwhelming blur of pain. Where is Naberius? Where is the decorator? God, what do we do? 

Beside us someone groans and staggers to their feet. "Babs?" We turn our head to see - 

No. Coronabeth. 

Her wide white smile is half-feral in the red light. "Sister," she says, "I've got this." 

So. That's how it is, then. 

On my other side, Naberius coughs and struggles, but he's as trapped as I am. "Don't do this," he calls, but Corona doesn't listen. She's staring at the approaching form of the decorator, who has shed her white coat to reveal body armor and a holstered pistol beneath it. 

Corona finds a jagged, bent length of rebar on the floor by her feet. She hefts it in both fists and swings it at the decorator, who is readying her gun. Surprise is on my sister's side. The rebar meets the decorator's hand with a crunch. The gun clatters away into the darkness and they both shriek - the decorator in pain, Coronabeth in triumph. 

Grinning fiercely, Corona takes another swing. This time, the decorator is ready. Her armored forearms block the strike, and her uninjured hand wraps around the rebar with a smoothness born of nonstop training. On a good day, my sister can hold her own against Naberius in the training room, but this fight is anything but a training match with a cavalier who (let's be honest) pulls his punches where his necromancer is concerned. The decorator shifts her weight around, doing something complicated with leverage and momentum. The scuffle ends with Corona flat on her back with the decorator straddling her, pressing the rebar down into her chest to restrain her. Only a few heartbeats have passed. Naberius redoubles his futile efforts to get out from under the beam. What do I do? What do I do? 

"You come at me with this thing instead of spirit magic?" the decorator says, sounding amused. "How interesting. You're not a necromancer at all, are you?" 

Corona's breath comes in a heavy wheeze. "Of course I am. I just don't want to kill you." 

"Oh really? I still want to kill you. It's what I was sent to do, after all. A shame my colleague panicked and set our bomb off prematurely. Good thing I have other ways to hurt you." The decorator's tone is relaxed, almost conversational. She could do this all night. She leans harder against the bar, choking off Coronabeth's whimper of pain. "I don't think I should kill you. I'll take you to my superiors instead. They'd be thrilled to have something over the Third House for once, instead of the other way around." 

"You don't want me," says Corona. "You want my sister." 

The decorator barely even bothers looking back at me. "What's the point? You're the face of the Third House, Princess. Everyone's eyes are always on you. Which is why it will make such an impression when we tell them all the truth about you." 

While she talks I've been taking in my surroundings, weighing my options. If I crane my neck and stretch, I can barely reach Naberius's shoulder. His shirt is ripped and his skin is hot and bare against my dry lips. He sucks in a sharp breath as I open my mouth and take a bite. I swallow, tasting iron on my tongue. His energy blooms through me. I can feel him now, and Coronabeth, and the decorator, and every one of the fresh corpses all around us, all bound together by the steady thrum of Ida connecting me to everything I am and everything I have to do. 

"Hey," I say. "Put your eyes on this instead." 

The force of the energy transfer kills the decorator almost instantly. She begins to turn toward me but then abruptly collapses, her expression eternally frozen in the dismayed shock of a member of the Leopards Eating Faces Party who can't believe leopards haven indeed eaten her face. I, on the other hand, feel stronger than ever. Lifting the beam off Naberius and me is trivially easy now, and I can already sense my bruises shrinking and my cracked bones knitting themselves back together. 

Naberius is struggling to stand, so I hurry to my sister's side. She's very still beside the decorator's body, and for a moment I fear I'm too late. Then she lifts her head and coughs, and relief surges through me. I kneel in the rubble next to her. "Is she dead?" Coronabeth asks, but that isn't really what she's asking. 

I lean down, my lips next to her ear, and whisper, "No one but us will ever know." 

Marta bellows over the din, "Third, are you alive in there?" 

And just like that, we're one again. 

"Yes," we shout back to her in a voice hoarse from smoke and shouting. "What's going on?" 

Palamedes pushes to the front, all too eager to explain. As a small army of security officers and medics and general looky-loos pours into the kitchen to see to the survivors, he fills us in. The waiters we passed in the corridor were BoE's reinforcements, their catering cart full of guns beneath the covered dishes. They'd planned to pick off anyone the bomb didn't finish off. When it went off ahead of schedule, they decided to improvise and take advantage of the confusion, only to be easily stopped by the combined efforts of the various cavaliers and Cohort soldiers in attendance. Even now the survivors are being hauled away by the Third House's intelligence detail to an unhappy but useful fate in a secret facility. To all appearances, the BoE cell has been wiped out in the process of killing almost no one they actually intended to kill. "So it's a happy ending," Palamedes concludes with a grimace, "all things considered." 

Although he's right to say things could have been much worse, it is not lost on us that our birthday _is_ ruined despite our best efforts. All the guests are being firmly and unceremoniously ushered away, Judith and Marta and Palamedes included. ("I told you so," Judith mouths as she passes us on her way out the door, and we pretend we didn't see her.) Naberius is bloodied and pale when they finish extracting him from the destroyed kitchen, and while his injuries aren't severe the chief medic insists he spend the night hospitalized for observation. Weakly, we try to insist on accompanying him, but nobody really takes the request seriously, not even us. His expression is half-smile, half-wince as they load him into the ambulance and rush him away. 

Father calls for a car to take us back to the main manor house. Our bedroom seems too large and too empty without Babs there, and we can't stop sneaking glances at his empty cot at the foot of our bed. We take off our tattered and bloodstained gowns and get into the bath, where we scrub the sweat and soot from each other's backs and comb out each other's hair. We don't speak. There's nothing to say. 

But later, in our soft canopy bed, in the heavy blackness of the too-quiet room, I ask Coronabeth, "Why did you tell that woman to take me instead of you?" 

"Ianthe, you know I didn't mean any of what I said. I was just buying you time to do what you did." 

"You should have let me handle things from the beginning instead of trying to do Babs's job." 

After a while she says, "Well, maybe I wanted to be the special one for once." 

I can't help laughing. "You already are. Everyone knows it. Even Blood of Eden does." 

"Well, what do you want to do about it? Tell them all the truth about us?" 

"No. I never said that." 

"Neither did I. But we can't help what we are." Coronabeth yawns. "We need to get some sleep. In the morning we'll go meet Babs at the hospital. Then things will get better. All three of us, together, the way it's supposed to be." Her own words seem to soothe her, and soon I can tell by her slow, even breathing that she's fallen asleep. I don't join her - not yet. 

No matter how much we share, no matter how much and how often I cover for her, Ianthe and I will never truly grasp the inner workings of each other's minds. That's why she'll never know about the bomb inside of me, counting down to something even I don't understand yet. We can't help what we are, it's true - but I can't change who I am either. I wonder if there can ever be a time when I'll be something more than an incomplete part of a fracturing whole, and if I'll even recognize it or want it when it comes. I wonder what it will be like, on the day that I finally blow. 


End file.
